Man plans family vacation, excludes GF's daughter with a heart condition. AITA?
AITA for not wanting to work around my girlfriend's daughter's nap schedule?
My girlfriend has an 8 year old daughter with a heart condition. I have a 7 year old daughter and 10 year old son.
My girlfriend's daughter has very specific needs that can be hard to work around. She can only be with one babysitter so if we want to go out without the kids, we have to go on the babysitter's schedule. If we do want to bring the kids we have to be at her house by 7 so her daughter can be in bed by 8.
Day trips are nearly impossible because she takes a 2-3 hour nap at 12 so we either have to be driving for those 2-3 hours, we have to leave after she wakes up, or we have to get a hotel/motel/air bnb for her to take a nap (yes, we've actually done this before).
Then there's all of the hospital stays to work around too. She stays in the hospital for 2 nights every 14 days. I only have 50/50 custody of my kids so it's very hard to get the kids together because of all of this.
Sure we can go to build a bear, the indoor playground down the street from her house, or out for ice cream but you can only do that so many times before the kids get bored of it.
I've been trying to plan a weekend trip to an amusement park for so long but she wants to make us all work around her daughter's nap schedule.
The amusement park doesn't open until 10 but we'd have to leave at 11:30 so she could go back to the hotel for her daughter to take a nap. We could go after she wakes up, so we'd probably get in at around 3:30 but the water rides close at 5 so my kids would only get to ride one, maybe 2 water rides then another couple regular rides before we'd have to go back for her daughter to go to bed.
She wants to do something that would be more accessible to her daughter (she can't go on the bigger rides or water slides and her having to take a nap would take a lot of time from the rides and games) like the beach and rent a place where we can do things in the house instead of having to go out all the time.
But, my kids really want to do the amusement park trip. I eventually told her we're going to do the amusement park, she and her daughter are welcome to join but we won't be leaving early for naps or an early bedtime.
She says I'm dismissing her daughter's needs but I think she's refusing to take anyone else's needs into account.
Here's what people had to say to the OP:
Take your children to the amusement park. Girlfriend and daughter can join or not. You had 2 kids before this gf, they should come first. They won’t be young for long and it would be a shame to miss this time of doing fun things with them.
It’s not their fault you chose this gf, don’t make them suffer. I’m not going to call a single mom with a little girl with a heart issue an AH, but you can have a backbone and put your children first sometimes, too.
I’ll call her an a**hole. She expects OP to put her kid above his and limit what they can do.
Honestly, who is in the right or in the wrong here seems irrelevant to me. If you cannot realistically accommodate your girlfriend’s disabled daughter without sacrificing your own children’s well-being (emotional included), then this relationship probably needs to end.
I am updating my vote to Y T A based on the fact—which you conveniently left out of your post and admitted to in the comments—that you are trying to split the cost with your girlfriend because you can’t afford to take your kids yourself.
Did you seriously ask your girlfriend to subsidize a trip without taking her daughter’s needs into consideration? It is downright cruel to expect your girlfriend to pay for an experience her disabled daughter can’t really enjoy and to insist on a group trip that doesn’t accommodate her daughter’s needs.
It has come to my attention that I may have misunderstood your comments. It’s still not clear to me whether you tried to talk your girlfriend into the amusement park trip after she pointed out that her daughter wouldn’t be able to fully participate.
If you did, then Y T A. If not, and all you said was—I can’t do a group trip with all five of us this year if you don’t agree to the amusement park this year due to costs, then I revert to my original vote of N A H.
The important thing, though, is that your kids and her daughter seem to have conflicting needs, which is going to make it EXTREMELY difficult to maintain a relationship.